Democratic Northwest. [volume] (Napoleon, Ohio) 1869-1894, 1887-11-24
LIFE AMONG THE LOGS.
View of a Sample Minnesota or Wisconsin
Lumber Camp.

There is no guesswork about lunl-
bering, says the st. Paul Globe. Each
log, from the day that it strikes the
earth in the pineries until it is laid on
the Dakota prairies for building pur-
poses, moves in fixed course.
But it is not the log, but the log-cut-
ter and log-driver that form the rarest
objects of interest in numbering. a
giant pine, sobbing and signing be-
fore its ignominous tumble, is to be
looked at but not half as quickly nor so
long as the "driver" threading his way
over jam or guiding the drive down
to the booms. From Chippewa Falls
in Wisconsin, to Brainerd and Frozen
City in this state, the genus homo
known as log-drivers are very numer-
Gus. Living in camps of their own
most of the year, seeking the small
cities only in short season of rest,
Injured to every exposure, bronzed by
the weather, rendered indifferent by
the dangers they have incurred, they
become peculiarly distinguished from
other men. A log-driver on drunk
is not a teamster or a railroader drunk
by any means.
His home when in service is under a
tent or in log huts arranged in the
clearing adjacent to his field of labor
Each camp has its own arrangements,
but as Il rule in the northwest
permanent structures are now erected
for shelter. At Wilson the company
owns all of the houses, the grocery and
supply stores, and rent the men their
homes and sell them their needed
supplies. At Clear Lake there is
much similar system, but both of these
towns lie in the heart of great forests.
Where long drives must be had, us
from the upper Brainerd country to
Minneapolis, or into Taylor's Falls or
down the Chippewa to Eau Claire, the
camp at the head of the work is rude.
ly constructed concern, meant only for
| shelter. not comfort. Your true lum.
bermen doesn't care. He desires more
| that the calks in his boot-soles should
be sharp than his bed soft. These
calks, half an inch long and in number
from ten to one hundred, give an
identity to the imprint of q logdriver's
| foot that can not be mistaken. In
wandering promiscuously over ''head
and tail'' jam, he finds his cork
life preservers, now not at the waist,
but on the heels. The manner in which
log in a jam can form a clock" and,
| being the key to the combination, hold
in apparently inextricable confusion
thousands of other logs is one of the
mysteries of numbering. Twenty-Five
million feet of logs in one jam at
Taylor's Falls and baby attachment
a little further up the stream of five
million feet. 1t is sight that people
go miles to see-this barricade OF
timber, built up on the surface of
great stream, defying man, and with
, grinding, groaning, and many u moan,
writhing in bounden rage against its
own work.
It's terrific sight-a mystery. The
s'breaking" of jam, which means
simply its end, is an apparently hercu.
lean task, although accomplished by
single man, who, If successful, dies in
his tracks, killed by the logs he has
freed, or escapes by only afearful race
against time across the stream to land
and safety. The chances these drivers
| will take at such moments are incredi.
BILE if not Witnessed. Their clumsy
hulls become the bodies of sprites,
who leap from floating log to log with
the touch of an antelope that spurns
without pressing. As the logs break
loose and the great mass begins tc
move, the crunching and grinding
that ensues is like the ragings Of a
giant loosening his bonds. A log
driver needs less instruments Of war,
perhaps, than any other soldier Of
labor. Give him pick-pole, which is
nothing more nor less than II Suidn.